Check out recent, colorful slide shows from several news sites, highlighting Delta history and innovations (sneak peek here of a Delta Boeing 747 first class in 1970):
CNN.com highlights changes in air travel since the late 1970s.
New York Times style blog features vintage Delta flight attendant uniforms.
Enjoy!
Marie Force
Archives Manager
Last week we announced that Delta is the official airline of the Minnesota Twins. As part of our multi-year partnership, we will sponsor the Delta SKY360 Legends Club at Target Field, a club-level space where we will offer fans an opportunity to sample the Delta brand and customer experience.
A unique and exciting component of the Club will be a branded concierge desk staffed by many of Delta’s finest frontline employees outfitted in Delta’s signature Red Coats. These individuals will partner with a Twins guest service representative during home games throughout the season to answer questions and provide customer service.
As a Minnesota native, I’m proud that our airline has chosen to partner with the home team! We’re excited to bring the distinctive Delta brand and experience to life for baseball fans visiting the new Delta SKY360 Legends Club. To get a sneak preview of the facility prior to the regular season home opener on April 12, check out the video:
Bill Lentsch
Delta Senior Vice President – Minnesota Operations
So I stretched the two-week update window to four weeks…where does the time go!?! Since my last update, we slipped past the 400 mark and are well on the way to achieving our goal of completing the entire domestic mainline fleet by this summer. I want to make a point of thanking our Engineering group and the Aircell technical teams responsible for the Wi-Fi installations. I still find it extraordinary that in just 18 months Delta will have gone from 1 airplane to a fleet of 540. So again, kudos to the folks at TechOps and the Aircell installation teams.
Our Wi-Fi partner, Aircell, continues to enhance the Gogo network with the introduction of new cell towers and by splitting existing towers into additional sectors. This “sectorization” provides more bandwidth to each plane, which enhances the onboard broadband experience — especially within high traffic flight paths — like the Northeast corridor.
Also of note, our friends (and codeshare partners) at Alaska Airlines, recently announced that they would be equipping their entire fleet with Gogo Inflight Internet…and Aircell announced additional cell towers would be installed in Alaska in order to cover the Alaska Airlines network. Good stuff.
Delta by the numbers…some interesting factoids:
The 437 Wi-Fi-equipped Delta aircraft represent 56% of the world’s entire Wi-Fi-enabled fleet.
Delta offers nearly 1,400 daily domestic flights with Wi-Fi; each day 180,000 customers fly on Wi-Fi-enabled Delta planes.
Since the launch of inflight Wi-Fi in December 2008, more than 1 million customers have used Wi-Fi on Delta planes.
Fleet Deets:
B737-700 10 (Fleet complete)
B737-800 71 (Fleet complete…note that 2 additional 737-800s will be equipped with Wi-Fi prior to joining the fleet)
B757-200 103 of 132
B757-200 ETOPS 17 of 17 (fleet complete)
B757-300 1 of 16 (deactivated pending STC)
B767-300 10 (Fleet complete)
B767-300 ETOPS 0 of 4
A319 47 of 49
A320 44 of 69
DC9-50 1 of 33 (deactivated pending STC)
MD88 117 (Fleet complete)
MD90 16 (Fleet complete…note that 12 additional MD90s will be equipped with Wi-Fi prior to joining the fleet)
We’re just about finished with the A319 fleet and the A320 fleet is more than halfway done. I’d love to hear from the folks in MSP, DTW and MEM (where most of the Airbus narrowbodies are based). Who’s surfed the Web on our Airbus fleet? How was the experience?
Chris B.
Sr. Product Manager, IFE
I love getting away and taking a vacation and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one, but sometimes I can’t afford a week long trip somewhere, so I try to take little weekend getaways here and there. Living in Minnesota it’s a MUST to get out of the winter and try to go somewhere warm! Below are some of my favorite weekend getaway spots.
New Orleans
I have a spot in my heart for New Orleans because I spent a full week down there after Hurricane Katrina to help gut and rebuild the communities. I met some amazing people and the hospitality of the people was great. Ever since then I try to get to New Orleans as much as I can to help support the city and try to bring it back to it’s glory days. I recently went down there and left Friday night and came back Sunday night. It was so much fun! We stayed right in the French Quarter at the Omni Royal Orleans where we could walk to everything. If you’ve never been to the French Quarter it is amazing, so much to do and so much history! Bourbon street is the famous area but there is so much more to see than just Bourbon street. Most of the restaurants have live jazz or blues music playing at night, it’s fun just to walk and listen to the music and get engulfed in the New Orleans energy. My wife and I were very surprised at the quality of shopping and spent a whole day walking and shopping. We also hit up the Harrah’s casino and went on a Haunted Ghost Tour at night. New Orleans is supposedly one of the most haunted cities and it turns out Nicholas Cages’s home in New Orleans is supposedly haunted! The food down there is to die for (no pun intended after talking about the ghost tour) the spot you have to stop at is Café DuMonde to get some famous beignets. But don’t inhale because you’ll choke from all the powdered sugar. The architecture is beautiful and to hear the history on the buildings and how old they are is very interesting. Jackson square has great buildings and if you walk around there you’ll see lots of street performers and at night you will see all the Tarot card readers and psychics. This might be my favorite weekend getaway!
Vegas is another fun place to go for the weekend. Obviously the gambling is a big draw but there is so much to do there besides gamble. There are world-class shows to see, award-winning restaurants from world-renowned chefs, and of course people watching. Might be one of the best places just to sit back and watch hustle and bustle. There are a lot of free shows you can watch like the fountains at the Bellagio or the pirate show at Treasure Island. Right now you can get great deals on a 3-night getaway. There is just so much to do in Vegas that even though a weekend is a short period of time you are awake until 3am each night so it seems like you are there for days! I can’t wait to get back and check out more shows now that I know the places to go. If you have never been and you are going for a weekend, I would recommend finding someone that help give you tips on where to go, eat and what to see. My one tip is to wear comfortable shoes and I mean very comfortable. You will do a lot of walking and the Strip is bigger than you think! Even if a building looks close it doesn’t mean it is…my wife thought she wore comfy shoes but ended up with what we call “Vegas Feet”, sore, blistery and black from walking barefoot! You can follow me on Twitter or find me on Facebook or comment on this post if you have questions on Vegas.
New York
Even though New York isn’t always warm, I love to go there in the summer. Just like Vegas there is a lot to do at all hours of the day. I’ve been to New York a couple times and I’m heading back this May to go play golf at Bethpage Black and try to get to the new Yankee Stadium. Can’t wait to do both! What I love about NYC is that there are two different New Yorks. You can go and do the touristy activities, which I highly recommend doing, like going to the MET, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Times Square, Central Park, etc… Then there is the local side of New York. I have a cousin and some friends who live in New York so it is fun to go visit them and go to the local spots for pizza or bagels, they are usually the best spots. Plus, you have a good chance and bumping into a celebrity at one of these local spots! You can’t go to New York and not walk around 5th Ave and all the shopping…yes, I’m a guy and I’ve mentioned shopping twice now in this blog…must be good shopping areas!
Those are just a few of my favorite weekend getaways and some others that are on my list for this year are Boston (got to go to Fenway and the Cheers bar), Seattle, and Austin (I hear it has a great music scene).
Where are your favorite weekend getaways? Post here or tweet us. We’ll share in a future blog post.
Sean C., Delta Vacations
